


timepiece

by Anonymous



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Broken Friendship, Childhood Friends, Gen, Minor Character Deaths, NHEV, No Happy Ending Fest, Non-Linear Narrative, mention of suicide, platonic!sekai, subtle mentions of selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29938092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: ‘you are not very kind’inked in sky blue in a messy handwriting.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: No Happy Ending Fest - 2020





	timepiece

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** self-prompt  
>  **Prompt:** 'you are not very kind' inked in sky blue in a messy handwriting.  
>  **Pairing/Main Character(s):** Oh Sehun/Kim Jongin  
>  **Side Characters(if any):** Doh Kyungsoo, Moonkyu, Lee Taemin.  
>  **Word Count:** 6.1K  
>  **Warning(s)/Additional Tag(s):** platonic sekai, broken friendship, subtle mentions of selective mutism, mention of suicide, minor character deaths, non-linear narrative.  
>  **Author's note:** i am really thankful that the mods let me submit this at the last moment ;;  
> if M didn't say "do this", this wouldn't have been here, so thank you. 95% of this story is lifted from my own story. title is from [timepiece by onew](https://open.spotify.com/track/6fr6AoTq8tmIsIpjlVAZVA?si=e85ac63a23b24acb), please listen to it when you read this.

it’s moonkyu who keeps him updated about his old high school. whether it is one of their teachers retiring or about the tteokbokki stall being replaced with an ice cream parlour.

one day it’s about a classmate’s passing away. jongin doesn’t know what to say after the quiet  _ what?  _ he lets out. it doesn’t even feel real. it has been more than a year since he last saw her. the rest of the day passes in blur, his classmates chattering sounding like a distant whisper.

he wouldn’t say he was close to her. they used to be in the same study group. he used to help her with maths when their teacher asked him to and they might have had a conversation or two at some point. still, jongin doesn’t remember anything. all he knows is, she doesn’t,  _ didn’t  _ like him that much because he once reported to their homeroom teacher about her skipping her lunch often. even so, he couldn’t help but feel mad about someone taking their own life. he doesn’t understand why she had to do that, and he feels like he doesn’t have the right to feel that way because he wasn’t close to her.

he thinks about her the whole day at school, tries to find any fraction of memories he could find about her to know what she was like. he wonders about so many things. whether she talked to any of her friends before what happened. whether she thought about her family. whether she had eaten that day.

then, unknowingly, his mind drifts to a familiar smile, teary eyes he would never get used to, and remembers a name that he almost forgot due to the lack of use. funny how he used to call for that name hundred times a day. he pushes the name to the back of his mind. suddenly he feels left out of his crowded classroom out of the blue. even when his desk mate asks him for something, he wordlessly passes his pencil pouch thinking why does this loss feel too much for him when he doesn’t even know anything about the girl except she never ate during the lunch period. 

that night when he goes to sleep, he wonders whether someone passed the news to sehun or not.

*

“sehun!” he calls out for his friend, gaining at least four students’ attention to them as he runs to where his friend is sitting. his friend doesn’t look so pleased with his shouting.

“why are you this excited in the morning?” he asks before looking around uninterested.

used to his indifference, jongin doesn’t even mind. he only grabs his friend’s hand and drags him out of their classroom despite sehun’s protests. “taemin brought this-“

sehun drags his feet, and jongin finds it hard to pull him further. sehun might look skinny but he can resist pretty well when he wants to. “you can go,” he says with a smile, a forced one. “i have to finish our maths homework.”

jongin frowns. sehun never liked talking to taemin; or any other friends jongin likes to talk. sehun doesn’t exactly hate them per se. sehun is just like that.

if jongin asks him, he would simply answer,  _ they don’t like me that much either.  _ jongin can’t even counter that because that’s somehow true. it’s not like they hate him but they won’t talk to him unless it’s important. unless they have the need to talk.

jongin pouts when sehun extracts his hand and walks back to his class. he looks towards the direction where taemin and others are hunched over his puppy that taemin’s mother brought because taemin wanted to show them. he just wants sehun to take a look.

sighing, jongin looks at sehun until he disappears into their classroom and then forgets about him, the fascinated remarks his friends make in the distance catching his attention.

he doesn’t remember when he started being friends with sehun. he doesn’t remember whether it was sehun or him who approached first. but he remembers how they don’t agree with one thing and their opinions would always be different from each other.

sehun likes boa and jongin likes to listen to english artists.  _ you don’t even understand half of the things,  _ sehun would retort whenever he’d play a song in his mp3 player. jongin would shush him and make him listen. and sehun would do the same to him with boa’s songs. before he knows, their music tastes start becoming similar. jongin finds himself asking his sister if she can play boa’s  _ valenti _ and sehun tells him how this one song from the movie they watched together is still stuck into his mind.

like that they fall into their own pace. jongin learns what to say to make sehun smile, what would make him frown. sehun would tag along with him when he eats with moonkyu and taemin. 

*

“jongin, what about these?” kyungsoo asks from where he’s standing on a stool. he decided to help jongin pack his things. they both are going to stay at the campus.

jongin still cannot believe he’s going to start college soon. it feels unreal. standing in his room which he won’t see for some time now that he’s going to live somewhere, he’s going to meet new people, learn new things, live a different life. he can’t believe he’s a business major. jongin from two years back would never have thought.

jongin looks at what kyungsoo is holding. those were his old diaries which he never wrote diligently despite swearing he would in the beginning of every year. and some greeting cards. and a slam book, torn at the edges, the shine on the front page faded. he almost forgot the existence of his slam book.

well, half of the people filled those pages aren’t even his life. he slowly reaches for it. kyungsoo gets down the stool and peeks over his shoulder with curious big eyes. jongin opens the first page and snorts. he had filled the first page so that everyone who is going to fill later would read it, would know about things they didn’t. it doesn’t even matter to jongin now. he looks at what he had written under the question  _ what’s your dream? _

__

‘fashion designer or a novelist.’

he lets out a chuckle. “i had a different dream each day. one day it’d be a movie director. another day i would want to be a journalist.” kyungsoo just smiles at him fondly. “i wouldn’t think i’d study business.”

he wouldn’t admit aloud that he was lost, and he just followed kyungsoo into taking this degree. at least he knows what he wants to do.

then, he turns next page. it’s moonkyu. then the next one.  _ oh sehun,  _ scribbled in a messy handwriting.

he just stares at the name for a minute long until kyungsoo points at something at the top most corner. “why would he write this?”

_ ‘you are not very kind’  _ inked in sky blue.

__

he never knew sehun had written this. it is his first time seeing it. he might have missed it among all the silly things sehun have written for him.

kyungsoo looks up at him with a frown, waiting for jongin to say something but words die inside his mouth. he never knew. he has never thought about what kind of a friend he had been to sehun.

“is that bothering you?” kyungsoo asks, worried when jongin doesn’t answer.

jongin just shakes his head. “i never knew.”  _ liar,  _ sehun would have said if he had heard it, a voice at his back of his mind says. maybe he knew, all those times he chose to eat with his other friends knowing that sehun only had him to eat with. all those times when he could have called him. all those times when he could have apologised instead of catering to his pride. “maybe i should have known.”

kyungsoo tells him it’s not true. jongin wants to tell him he’s so wrong for that. he doesn’t even know what sehun was like. but he has his stupid pride, and it feels nice that someone is vouching for him. at least to one friend he is kind. at least to one friend he isn’t the bad guy.

“sehun wasn’t like what they say, you know?” he says as he closes the slam book, placing it in between his old diaries. the rest of it should be read later, not now. when he’s ready to face it like a man, not when he wants to hide from himself. “he is a nice guy. they just didn’t like how straight-forward he was.”

kyungsoo knows sehun, has heard about him from moonkyu. jongin tells him this because he wants at least one person to see the sehun he knows. not the one everyone else knew about.

“he would talk about things he is interested in and no one ever put in the effort to listen to him.” jongin and sehun were like two halves of the same thing, even if it’s too late for jongin to acknowledge. they both liked dance. they both liked eating tteokbeokki after school. they both wanted to be free. but strangely enough, everyone around them only listened to jongin. they were never ready to listen to sehun. and sehun looked like he never cared about it. maybe deep down he cared about it. that is why jongin had been the only one he let inside his life, lowering the walls he built, letting his guard down for him to see. but then what did jongin do in return? 

“maybe i deserve that,” he tells kyungsoo later that day as jongin’s sister drives them to their university. she drives through the area where his old high school stands, and he keeps an eye out for sehun’s house. sehun lives near the school. and when he does, his heart beats so fast but disappointment and confusion hit at the same time when he sees the  _ for sale  _ board in the front yard. the radio plays one of those english songs he used to listen with sehun and jongin wonders whether sehun has been listening to them these days. whether he has been into some other genres. whether he had enrolled himself in a law school.

*

that day, sehun is later than he usually arrives despite the school being only five minutes walk from his house. jongin waits for him by the gate because he wants to tell him about a movie he watched last night.

when sehun arrives, jongin calls his name loudly and waves at him. sehun though, smiles, an unusual smile. a shy one. that gives away something.

“what’s that?” jongin eyes him suspiciously. “why are you smiling?”

“i am not?” sehun says while trying to control his cheeks from smiling.

jongin squints his eyes at him. “something’s fishy with you.”

sehun sighs, still smiling, and pushes a toffee into his hands before holding his hand to walk to their class. “we are going to be late, come on.”

jongin spots him smiling most of time during the classes and wonders what the toffee is for.

it’s not until the lunch break he knows what up. “it’s his birthday. my mother told me about it,” taemin tells him when they wait for their lunch to be served. taemin lives in sehun’s block.

“happy birthday,” he wishes once sehun comes back with his food. sehun looks surprised but his ears turn red as he sits across jongin’s seat. “you weren’t going to tell me?”

“i was, later when we go home,” he tells him quietly. he doesn’t look up from his plate, and jongin realises that the boy is just shy. then he remembers he’s supposed to give him something.

“i don’t have anything to give to you, you should have told me two months ago so i could have saved some of my allowance.”

sehun just shrugs. “it’s alright. don’t worry about it.”

jongin pouts. it’s sehun’s first birthday they are together and he feels like he should give something. he mutters a quiet  _ wait  _ and runs to find his bag, not paying attention to sehun’s calls.

he ransacks his bag, to see if there’s anything. or some money so he could buy something for him after school. but there’s only few coins. there’s also his sister’s scrunchie with a star that looks like it’s made of glass. jongin stares at it, seriously contemplating.

what would sehun do with a scrunchie?

he still gives him that anyway and sehun looks at it blankly. “what am i gonna do with this?”

jongin just smiles sheepishly. sehun stares at it more.

“it’s cute, thank you,” he says as he pockets it. “i like it.”

“keep it safe, don’t lose it.” sehun tends to lose things. so does jongin. two halves of the same thing.

“don’t worry about it.” then he proceeds to tell about his father who woke him up holding a cake and how he blew the candle wishing for everyone’s happiness as they eat.

(two birthdays later sehun would tell him how much he liked that because it has a star that looks like it’s made out of glass. he would say it’s one of his favourite possessions.)

for the rest of the birthdays they spend together, they don’t buy anything grand for each other. sometimes it’d be just toffees from sehun’s end and tteokbeokki treats from jongin’s. unknowingly, they both cherished the other’s presence more than anything else. 

*

he texts moonkyu asking if he has taemin’s number. moonkyu replies telling him that taemin is in the military and jongin’s mind wanders back to the days where he would opt to study with taemin, letting sehun all alone because of their silly fights. now he isn’t even aware of taemin enlisting whom he chose over sehun.

it’s a silly thought but it feels like a kick to his gut. moonkyu still manages to get the number for him.

talking over phone isn’t something he’s very fond of. never has been.

so when he checks with taemin’s free days and calls him to ask whether he knows about sehun’s whereabouts and when taemin picks up the phone, his voice dies in his throat. taemin’s hellos only incites anxiety so he hands the phone over to kyungsoo who is studying at his study desk. kyungsoo gives him an understanding look and speaks on behalf of him as he hands jongin his water bottle.

he doesn’t know how on earth he got a friend like kyungsoo, who knows exactly what to do at times like this.

when kyungsoo hands back the phone, jongin inhales a deep breath and takes his time to find his voice this time.  _ it’s just taemin,  _ he tells himself.

_ “man, you didn’t change at all.”  _ it isn’t what he is saying that pricks but the laughter that follows after does.  _ “i heard you got into college now. you should be confident at least now.”  _

jongin briefly thinks about why he used to go to taemin whenever he’s not on good terms with sehun. “i just…wanted to ask about sehun.”

taemin tells him that sehun’s family moved back to seoul. jongin lets him ask a question or two in an attempt of conversing before he lies about having a class. kyungsoo doesn’t even look up from his homework.

“sehun moved to seoul,” he announces to kyungsoo as he plops down his own bed. kyungsoo only hums but he knows he’s listening. “he used to talk about seoul a lot. that’s where he born and his grandparents live. maybe he’s happy there.”

maybe he enrolled himself in a good law school and he’s studying hard to become a lawyer like he always wanted to.

“I hope he’s happy,” jongin says quietly, to himself. kyungsoo doesn’t hear that and goes back to focus on his homework. 

*

“jongin,” sehun calls his name gently. “jongin.”

jongin doesn’t look up from his science book, words blurry because his eyes are filled with unshed tears.

“ _ oh my god,”  _ sehun whispers, “why are you crying?” he stands up from his seat and is beside jongin the next second.

jongin mumbles something very incoherent and sehun has to crouch down to listen to him clearly. jongin sniffs and repeats, “i stuttered a lot.”

their science teacher wanted to see how well they all can read and had asked them to read few paragraphs from their book. by the time it’s his turn, jongin had become a shivering mess. it took a minute to get done with one sentence and he could see the teacher’s patience threading.

it’s not like no one knows about his problem, they do. he stutters a lot when he talks, if it’s not someone he feels comfortable with. they hear him stutter when he answers his attendance. they laugh when he stumbles over his words. they don’t make fun of him but those little jabs here and there under the guise of harmless teasing, it pricks his pride a little.

still they had to laugh out when the teacher questioned him. he had felt insulted.

they are tears of shame, tears of being ridiculed by people he cares about, even a little. he doesn’t even look up at sehun.

“jongin, it’s fine. it’s not like you don’t know how to read,” says sehun. “people who laughed at you, that’s all they are good at.”

jongin looks up only because sehun sounds so,  _ so _ mad.

“honestly, don’t half of them come to you when they have doubts? when it comes to english, you are the only one they can rely on. so if they think you are below them for not being able to read that passage aloud, then the joke’s on them. they can laugh all they want, tease you all they want but it’s always you who gets the top marks. they can’t even tell stories like you.”

that last line makes jongin smile which bubbles into a chuckle and sehun sighs, a little content that he made jongin feel okay. he asks if jongin wants to go eat tteokbeokki after school and jongin would never say no.

he feels a little lighter as he walks hand and hand to the tteokbeokki stall, knowing sehun will never make fun of him even if he stutters the worst.

*

it’s not like he thinks about oh sehun that often.

sometimes oh sehun is just a fleeting thought in middle of his taxation classes which he doesn’t pay much attention to. sometimes oh sehun is a faint whisper at the back of his head when he goes out drinking with kyungsoo, chanyeol and baekhyun and when they all dive into the talk of their school days.

_ is he doing okay? _

he doesn’t speak much about sehun. except kyungsoo, no one even knows an oh sehun exists in jongin’s life. even his sister might have forgotten sehun because all he talks about now is kyungsoo, sometimes chanyeol and baekhyun. sometimes even his seniors junmyeon and yixing. but never sehun. talking about sehun makes him feel like he’s being silly, holding onto a candy wrapper after dropping the candy on the ground, because he’s clumsy, because he’s careless like that.

at those times, all he needs is a speck of distraction and thoughts about sehun would fade away as if they were never even there. like how his lips forgot the way his name sounded. like how he forgot how sehun used to sound. what was his voice like? jongin doesn’t remember.

on his worse days, sehun’s name remains in his mind, written in bold permanent marker. along with the lines he wrote in his slam book.  _ ‘you are not very kind’  _ he imagines sehun saying that to him. but again, the sehun he knows would never say that to his face. he could be disinterested, he could be indifferent, he could insult his music taste but he would never ever say that.

maybe that is why he wrote it in there, in sky blue, at the top most corner of the space jongin left for him. not wanting to hold in those words, not wanting to be so obvious about it. because he would never say that.

but whenever he thinks about sehun, he wonders. he wonders if he’s doing well. and he wonders if sehun ever thinks of him like he does.

*

it’s moonkyu who calls him to tell him about homework if he ever missed classes. he’s only used to speaking to moonkyu on the phone. sehun called once and jongin couldn’t get out a word so sehun ended up telling about the postponed exam to his mother. sehun never called after that.

so when moonkyu calls one evening while jongin works on their science practical record, jongin expects him to tell something about school. but he isn’t ready for what moonkyu has to tell him.

_ “it’s sehun’s dad.”  _ moonkyu’s voice is quiet.

“what?”

_ “he passed away. this morning. i thought i’d let you know.”  _ when jongin doesn’t say anything, moonkyu gets the message and hangs up. jongin stands there, staring at the plain wall for god knows how long, until his mother asks him what’s wrong. he breaks down, right into his mother’s arms.

his mother panics because all he manages to say is  _ mom, sehun… _ “jongin, breathe. tell me slowly. what happened to sehun?”

jongin tells his mother, all while crying  _ because sehun loves his dad so much, what would he do without him? what would i do when i see him, mom? _

jongin doesn’t know how it would feel like if he loses a parent, god forbid, he doesn’t even want to imagine but all he wants now is to hold sehun close and tell him it will be alright, that he is with him. 

sehun doesn’t come to school the next day. or the next week. or the week after. or the whole month. the teachers and other classmates who visit him would tell how skinny he seems. they would tell how he looks like a mess.

jongin never goes to see sehun.

it’s exam week and when it’s only ten minutes left for the exam to start, jongin has his eyes plastered to his english workbook, not really looking at it and the buzzing around him sounding so distant.

then another english workbook crowds his vision and he recognises the messy handwriting written on it and he almost snaps his neck as he looks up. it’s sehun, who doesn’t meet his eye but only mutters, “tell me something i can read quickly.”

if it had been any other time, jongin would have snatched the book away and ignored him because he hates being talked to before the wee hours of exams (just because discussing anything related to the exam makes him  _ panic _ ) but this time it’s different and  _ it’s sehun  _ so he diligently marks few questions he knows sehun has already studied during the earlier exam weeks.

sehun doesn’t look like what they told him. he doesn’t look like he lost someone. he comes back after the exam and looks at jongin with a hint of smile, not like sehun at all and he says, “let’s finish lunch quickly and study. i haven’t revised for mathematics.”

jongin just nods. he doesn’t think he can watch sehun cry either. a part of him feels glad while another part of him screams that his friend isn’t acting like himself. that this is wrong. that his friend shouldn’t be acting all okay. but he disregards it when sehun looks back at him with a smile and jerks his head as if he’s calling him.

jongin follows him not knowing why his heart feels heavier, especially after seeing sehun smile like that at him. why couldn’t he gather him in his arms and tell him it would be alright? why did jongin think it would be that easy?

it’s after the last test, sehun spaces out as jongin opens their lunch for the both of them. sehun doesn’t answer him even after jongin calling his name thrice.

“it’s the 49 th day today,” sehun says quietly.

jongin just sits there, his lunch box half open and half closed with his hands unmoving, as if he would shatter something if he moves. sehun looks the other way and jongin only watches the way sehun’s shoulders shake up and down. he gains his composure and moves to sehun, puts his arm over him. he runs a hand over the other’s back and whispers to him not to cry. sehun is lithe, he simply falls over jongin’s lap and cries. he cries his heart out. with each sobs that rakes through his body, jongin’s heart grows heavier. 

“i miss him.”

he just sits there with a broken sehun in his arms, feeling helpless, useless. he stutters as he tells sehun not to cry but he couldn’t even hear himself. he doesn’t even realise he’s crying too until his eyes sting.

“sehun-ah,” he calls out weakly. “it’s going to be okay.”

but it doesn’t sound right even to him. what he’s saying. how can he be okay? he’s just 15 and lost his father. he loves his father so much and how can he suddenly alright when he can’t even see him.

jongin holds sehun tighter. “of course, it’ll take time. take all your time. don’t let anyone rush your grieving. but one day in future, you’ll talk about him without feeling like crying.”

sehun doesn’t stop crying. nor does he leave his tight clutch of jongin’s uniform. jongin cries with him.

that’s the first time he sees sehun cry.

(years later, he would realise that’s also the last time he has seen sehun cry.) 

*

he is back home after the final semesters. just one more year and he’ll be done with his undergrad. he texts his friends from uni now and then. moonkyu still randomly updates him about everything he would forgotten about otherwise—about who is doing what, about the girl who wanted to study medicine about to get a teaching degree, about their classmate who is gonna tie the knot, about the classmates who enlisted, about taemin’s discharge.

another day, he runs into a classmate. kang seulgi, he almost cries internally when he recalls her name. they exchange pleasantries and she tells him that she’s studying in seoul. sehun crosses his mind and he asks her whether she in contact with sehun. she laughs at the question and says, “if someone might know anything about him, that would be you. you are the only one he was close to. if you don’t know, then i doubt anyone here would know. have you tried asking to moonkyu though?”

_ you are the only one he was close to.  _ jongin wants to tell her that it’s because no one even tried to know sehun past the labels they put on him. suddenly he feels so angry that he could snap at her. but he just forces a smile and excuses himself.

so what if sehun had been straight-forward? what if he liked things others found boring? who were they to talk as if they know sehun? they don’t even know him.

_ ‘you are not very kind.’  _ and realisation hits jongin that he could be one of them too. pretending to know sehun so well. how can he be so sure of that?

jongin would never know.

later that night, he looks for his slam book. opens the second page where sehun had filled words he didn’t even bother to read.

sehun has used pink and sky blue pens and filled his name, there is a phone number, the number he doesn’t even know who uses. there is something about him being a lawyer. there is something about him liking boa. there’s something about him finding jongin very handsome. there’s something about jongin being a good boy if not his huge ego. that makes jongin let out a dry chuckle as his eyes water. memories from four years ago come back to him and he thinks,  _ yes, I really do deserve this.  _ then there’s a bold  _ don’t forget  _ written in big letters.

maybe it’s a curse, to be not able to forget someone he took granted for back then. maybe that’s what sehun wanted.

__

there’s a _‘you are my first best friend. you are my only friend’_ written at the very end and jongin stares at it because sehun had written that second line with a black pen and had overwritten _my first_ with black ink too. that is when another memory strikes him.

__ he thinks that maybe, maybe sehun never saw jongin as one of them.

*

they always have had fights. it’s mostly jongin going back to sehun, always being the first one to make up. after sehun lost his dad, he’s gotten snappish,  _ insensitive _ . he would pick fights for no reason. none of their fights lasted a day.

the worse one happens. jongin talks back defiantly and sehun throws in some jabs, both not really meaning it but their useless man pride doesn’t let them think through his words and before they know, they are too hurt to go back as if nothing happened.

(years later jongin would only laugh bitterly at how naive they were.)

at first they both avoid each other for a week. jongin can see sehun pretending as if their fight isn’t affecting him so he holds back. _ no, i won’t go to him first,  _ he thinks and holds back. a week turns two and then three weeks pass just like that.

with their finals coming, jongin sees sehun getting tired. but still he doesn’t go talk to him, his ego inflating every time someone asks him about their fight. he doesn’t even remember what the fight was about but he kind of swears to himself that he wouldn’t talk to sehun until sehun apologizes first.

but sehun stands by his stance that he isn’t wrong and so he won’t apologize. jongin only thinks  _ i wasn’t wrong either. _

before they know, it’s a month before their finals and a week before sehun’s birthday. sehun acknowledges his defeat and smiles at jongin one day. jongin who still has his head into the gutters, looks away, feeling something ugly grow in his chest.

jongin only realises that he missed sehun’s birthday two days later. he doesn’t even remember whether he saw sehun that day or not since they were busy with revisions.

farewell party comes a week before the start of exam and everyone pass their slam books around to fill in. jongin has one too and he lets moonkyu snatch it and fill in the first page. but he tells everyone after that to leave the second one blank.

he reserves it for sehun.

he doesn’t feel brave enough to look into his eyes when he gives him and doesn’t look up from the ground when sehun snatches it. sehun takes all his time to write it, using different colours. he likes it colourful. when he hands back the slam book to jongin, there’s a hint of smile and jongin takes it, acknowledges it with a nod and mutters a thank you.

without even reading what sehun has written for him, he passes it to sehun’s deskmate, sooyoung, asking her to fill it.

later that day, they take a group picture and jongin finds sehun to stand beside him. (years later jongin would notice how wide sehun smiled in that picture, the happiest he has ever seen him.)

the next day, on the period before lunch, sooyoung asks for the slam book again and jongin gives it to her. she only returns it during lunch saying, “it’s sehun who wanted to write something.”

he turns to take a look at his friend and he isn’t even in his place.

finals start and all jongin thinks about nothing but the finals. sehun is the last thing on his mind. they study together during english and mathematics because that’s how it has been since the beginning but they don’t even talk once.

sehun makes sure to pass a  _ good luck  _ before each exam and jongin would return it.

before they know, they write their last exam and some of their classmates break out in tears because half of them are going to transfer schools. jongin is one of them and it dawns upon him that he won’t see moonkyu or seulgi or sooyoung or taemin the next day. they won’t be his classmates anymore. jongin tears up at that thought. he’s going to miss this.

sehun catches his eyes. he’s just like the usual, wordlessly packing his things, ready to go home but this time, he stops to tell goodbye to their classmates. it hits him like a truck,  _ he will miss sehun _ . it has been more than a month since they last talked because they have been fighting over something really stupid and jongin doesn’t even remember what it was about. even though sehun let it slide, jongin has been the only one stubbornly holding on to his ego, not talking to him.

he won’t see sehun after this day.

then they meet eyes and sehun walks to him with a smile. “can i hug you once?”

it stuns jongin. he stands there unmoving when sehun wraps his arms around him. he couldn’t even bring himself to hug him back. when sehun lets him go, his eyes glistening. “see you.”

and then he walks out of the class.

that’s the last he sees of sehun. 

*

it’s somewhere around 1 at night he realises that it’s sehun’s birthday in two days. it has been six years since he last saw him, six years since he last heard about him.

he makes a reminder to text a wish to that number sehun left in his slam book. he still has no idea who uses that number, whether it’s sehun or his elder brother or a complete stranger. but he still texts every year and forgets to put his name once. he has been doing that never missing a year. just in case it’s sehun.

sehun is still a fleeting thought that arrives sometimes during his sleepless night, sometimes during a very comfortable evening he spends alone. sometimes he would run into an old friend and ask if they heard anything about sehun.

he thinks about taemin who asked about sehun when the last time they met at jongin’s sister’s wedding. “man, maths periods with him as my deskmate were fun. i miss those days.” maybe taemin misses sehun too. taemin looks grown up, a better version of himself. jongin wonders if that’s how he’ll look like to sehun if he sees him now. he wonders how a better version of sehun will look like.

he’d look up oh sehun in social media networks but the sehun he’s looking for won’t show up. he wouldn’t even be surprised if sehun doesn’t have one. sometimes it is him who brings up the name when he tells stories about his life to his now friends.

he would tell them how he had a friend who listens to boa, with whom he used to go eat tteokbeokki after school.  _ sehun used to do this,  _ he would tell them. he would show them the group photo they took that year and tell him sehun is smiling because he’s beside him. he would let them know that a person like that exists in his life.

sehun would cross his mind now and then, he would briefly wonder how he’s doing. there’d be a heavy void that wouldn’t let him breath for a moment. but then he’d think about sehun’s words in his slam book.

_ you are my first best friend. you are my only friend. _

__

he’d wonder if sehun thinks about his first best friend from time to time, the boy who gave him a star a decade ago. he’d wonder how many times sehun had forgiven him for the things he has said, for the things he swallowed in, in this six years.

sometimes he would just wish he had crossed sehun’s mind just once.

he might not even think about him. he could have forgotten jongin. it has been six years.

what if it’s only jongin would have been holding on to sehun, those memories, selfishly, stubbornly? and what if that’s what sehun wanted him to do?

_ don’t forget,  _ he had written in big bold words.

he’d think about the day he’d see sehun again. would they greet with a smile? would sehun nod in acknowledgement? would sehun even feel elated seeing him, at least an ounce of what jongin would feel?

then those thoughts would go away, he’d live his life, from time to time he’ll think about this boy who gave him a toffee on his birthday.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this on the day i realised her birthday is in two days and writing it down felt like the only way to deal with what i was feeling. 
> 
> i am jongin and she was my sehun. most of the things here, the guilt, the regret, the words written in the slam book are very real. in fact, i didn't even pay attention to that _you are not very kind_ until the day i started writing this. so memories hit very different when i recalled them. 
> 
> to jongin and sehun, i just hope they will forgive each other and themselves as i believe they have grown up to be a better person from what they used to be.
> 
> to s, happy birthday. i miss you.


End file.
